NYT Should Explain How It Selects Which Articles Get Translated into Mandarin
The front page of the NYT today features the story of Anastasia Lin, Chinese-born and Canadian-raised Miss Canada, who was denied entry to China for the Miss World contest.
Clasping hands with youngsters in red Communist Youth League scarves,…
Turkey, Geezers, Favre and Trash Talk
Welp, here we are upon another Thanksgiving. All of us here at Emptywheel - Marcy, Jim White, Ed Walker and me [EW: Hey! You forgot Rayne!] - are thankful for your readership, commentary and friendship. Some of you are newer, some have been…
Thanksgiving Blessings
Whew.
I've already conceded defeat and the Detroit Lions don't start playing for another hour.
Happy Thanksgiving all! It's been a busy morning here at Chez Emptywheel, in part because our awesome meat farmers can't seem to raise turkeys…
New Problems with DOD's Médecins Sans Frontières Story
Count me as thoroughly unimpressed by DOD's explanation of what its almost two month long investigation into the attack on Médecins Sans Frontières' hospital in Kunduz showed.
Don't get me wrong: I still think this explanation -- that the…
FISC Makes Far Better Amicus Choices Than I Expected
I've long been skeptical about the potential efficacy of the amicus provision in USA Freedom Act, especially because the government can always withhold information.
But the FISC (and FISCR's, they make clear) choices for potential amici…
Both Iran and the US Have Their Scary Monsters
"Cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber..."
That's my best summary of the intended jist of this NYT story (I'll return to the real news in it in a big), reporting…
Obama Administration Changed the Rationale for Why Assassinations Don't Violate the Assassination Prohibition
As a number of outlets have reported, the Second Circuit last month upheld the government's effort to keep a March 29, 2002 OLC memo pertaining to targeted killing secret; the opinion was unsealed yesterday. The government is probably doing…
Guy Who Worked at White House When It Self-Authorized Dragnet Thinks Dragnets Are Cool
Eleven judges from the DC Circuit denied Larry Klayman's request to overturn the stay that a panel put on Richard Leon's injunction against the dragnet today.
Of those 11 judges, just one decided to weigh in on the legality of the dragnet…
An Important Battlefield after Paris: US Counterterrorism Hegemony
Last week, I suggested that most commentators were misinterpreting a speech John Brennan made, assuming he intended to implicate just encryption and Edward Snowden in the Paris attack. Given that he repeatedly invoked changes the Europeans…
The Internet Dragnet Was a Clusterfuck ... and NSA Didn't Care
Here's my best description from last year of the mind-boggling fact that NSA conducted 25 spot checks between 2004 and 2009 and then did a several months' long end-to-end review of the Internet dragnet in 2009 and found it to be in pretty…
2011 Internet Dragnet Audit Didn't Find Significant Violation Reported to IOB
This will be the second of three posts on the NSA IG's failures to correct problems with the Internet (PRTT) dragnet. In the first, I showed how quickly NSA nuked the PRTT (or at least claimed to) after John Bates ruled, a second time, that…
Big Game Trash Talk
The world is now one week post Paris attacks. War drums are being pounded, and the worst tendencies of American chicken hawks is in its full pageant grandeur. For being such an "exceptional" people, we sure have our head up our ass an awful…
The NSA (Said It) Ate Its Illegal Domestic Content Homework before Having to Turn It in to John Bates
The question of whether NSA can keep its Section 215 dragnet data past November 28 has been fully briefed for at least 10 days, but Judge Michael Mosman has not yet decided whether the NSA can keep it -- at least not publicly. But given what…
10 Goodies USA Freedom Act Gives the Intelligence Community
Since the Paris attack has turned much of our country into a shriveling pack of cowards, Republicans have ratcheted up claims that USA Freedom Act will make us less safe. Those claims tend to be so ignorant they claim the law -- passed in June…
The Reasons to Shut Down the (Domestic) Internet Dragnet: Purpose and Dissemination Limits, Correlations, and Functionality
Charlie Savage has a story that confirms (he linked some of my earlier reporting) something I've long argued: NSA was willing to shut down the Internet dragnet in 2011 because it could do what it wanted using other authorities. In it, Savage…
Dianne Feinstein Inadvertently Calls to Expose America's Critical Infrastructure to Hackers
For days now, surveillance hawks have been complaining that terrorists probably used encryption in their attack on Paris last Friday. That, in spite of the news that authorities used a phone one of the attackers threw in a trash can to identify…
How the Government Uses Location Data from Mobile Apps
The other day I looked at an exchange between Ron Wyden and Jim Comey that took place in January 2014, as well as the response FBI gave Wyden afterwards. I want to return to the reason I was originally interested in the exchange: because it…
Brennan Was Probably Talking about the Telegram PRISM Gap as Much as Encryption
I noted the other day that at a pre-scheduled appearance Monday, Josh Rogin cued John Brennan to explain how the Paris attack happened without warning. In my opinion, the comment has been badly misreported as an indictment solely of Edward…
Why Does Saudi Arabia Want to Arrest One of Its Princes?
Morocco arrested a Saudi prince as he was attempting to leave Casablanca's airport and fly to Paris on Thursday. The report on the arrest does not explain why he was arrested -- unlike the Saudi prince arrested in the US in September for sexual…
The Great Transformation Part 6: Labor as a Fictitious Commodity
Previous posts in this series:
The Great Transformation: Mainstream Economics and an Introduction to a New Series
The Great Transformation Part 1: The Market
The Great Transformation Part 2: More on Markets
The Great Transformation…